Many firsts in this project. Please be patient but I could really use some help

john_antkowiak

Well, here goes. Hello, everyone :) I'm a Daz-Studio-for-fun user needing a professional 3D printing service for my first time ever dealing with anything 3d printed. It took a while, but I found a guy willing to cost out a solution.. He uses a few platforms but one of them is Blender. I don't use Blender and he doesn't use Daz Studio. I've heard of the Bridge to Blender, so I told him I'd try to find out how I can export a pair of figures such that he can load them into Blender, get a sense of the project, prepare them for printing, turn them into .stl files, and print them. (That's about the limit of what I know about this process and Blender.)

Daz product artists have to package their models in a pretty rigid file structure so Studio can use them. does the same thing apply to Blender models? Am I going to email him one file for each figure, or ten for each figure? Do I need to use the bridge plugin? Does he? One thread in this forum talked about Studio also being able to output Blender formats as an alternative, but I'm not clear on what that situation is today. It was quite an old post.

Once the models are printed, I'll treat them as I would a model kit that I bought off the shelf. I'll modify and paint them, and add them to a diorama. I suppose that when I give these to him, texture maps won't be necessary but will normal maps? One post talked about printing problems ensuing when normals are flipped. Again I've seen this expression but don't really get the concept.

People talk about having to examine every polygon to ensure waterproofing. That sounds like a nightmare requiring months of time, but if it really was that much of a hassle nobody would do it. Can anyone comment more about this kind of work and whether there's a point where "some work" becomes a "ton of work" and then becomes an unsurmountable problem because I didn't know what I was doing? What's a reasonable amount ot time to spend waterproofing the mesh?  

It took me a long time to speak Daz. I don't speak Blender at all, so please be patient.  
 

lilweep

You would hope that if someone is a professional 3d printer, they would already have a pipeline for converting complex obj to printable .stl and be able to guide customers to a solution.  Otherwise they should change profession.

Anyway, you only need the mesh data. you dont need any packaged files nor maps/textures.  3d printing involves only printing the mesh.

To get mesh, you can set your resolution/SubD in Parameters and then export your scene as .obj and give this .obj to the person so they can create .stl from that.

Regarding flipping normals and waterproofing.  In Blender, it wouldnt be needed since Normals will be on correct side anyway, but if it was, the user can just select all mesh and recalculate normals outside. It is like two clicks of a mouse in blender. 

I dont know anything about making a model watertight but assume it's a fairly googleable process.  For 3d-printing, the models will need to be manifold (i.e., one single mesh). In Daz, you have clothing, eyes, props all as separate mesh so they would need to be combined. I can't imagine that is difficult.  I would just join all objects (Ctrl+J) and then remesh them with Remesh modifier (again this is only a few clicks). But probably someone expert in Blender would have a better way and would know how to resolve any issues that arise.

Padone

I don't 3dprint, but I see there's a nice tutorial on this in the daz docs.

https://www.daz3d.com/3d-printing-information

p.s. I understand the main issue is to turn a daz figure into something "solid", as it was made from sculpting. I don't think daz figures are particularly fit, since outfits and hair are separate layers and usually made with surfaces or polylines, so you may need to solidify then merge with booleans.

john_antkowiak

Thank you VERY much for that guidance, both of you. Padone, I hadn't seen this article and it's exactly where I needed to start. God bless you.

Lilweep, yes, they already know what they're doing but they don't use Daz. There's no shame in that. Daz has its quirks. I'm trying to figure it all out. I had asked about Normal maps because at least in 3D art, they change the appearance of the rendered surface texture and I didn't know whether the same applies to the physical tactile texture when printed. I'm very relieved to know it's a non-issue, thank you for that.

Something you said intrigues me because I tried once (failed) to create a model using Daz primitives, but I couldn't join all the parts so I could add bones and treat them as one object. I thought at the time I downloaded Blender and tried that but I couldn't make it work there either. I don't think I knew about Ctrl+J. Probably it helps to know what one is doing